11.06.2018, 13:33

Fighting Online Fraud

With online fraud and identity theft reaching record levels in the UK, technology company Sinerix has taken steps to combat this growing concern by developing a faster and more efficient onboarding service that will allow businesses to verify the true identity of their customers in just a few seconds.

Sinerix has developed a suite of modular software tools aimed at businesses operating across a range of sectors including property, financial services, airports, legal, human resources, mortgage providers and security, that rely on safe document exchange, ID verification and a fast and secure onboarding process.

The technology allows individuals to be positively identified and matched in real time against any EU, US and other international photo ID, such as a passport, driver’s licence or identity card.

Visual and GPS location data is taken to provide a positive identification and exact location of the user and provides risk assessment data and a transactional audit trail in a GDPR- compliant format.

David Kern, CEO for Sinerix said: “Sinerix is a cloud technology company that offers a fully automated KYC (Know Your Client) onboarding solution that is capable of verifying and linking individuals to any government-issued photo ID document with the use of its anti-spoofing biometric facial recognition software, in real time.

“This development is particularly timely as the UK’s Home Office acknowledges the benefits that technologies, capable of using algorithms and facial recognition software, bring in helping to crack down on rising levels of online fraud and identity theft.

According to the latest Fraudscape report from Cifas, identity theft continued to rise in 2017, hitting an all-time high of over 175,000 cases, with 95% of these involving the impersonation of an innocent victim. The report claims that fraudsters are changing tactics and are now targeting telecoms, online shopping and insurance companies, rather than traditional banks and credit card businesses.

Commenting on new ways to combat this rise in identity theft, Sandra Peaston, Director of Strategy, Policy and Insight, Cifas said: “We need to give further consideration to the way in which we identify people online and alternatives to knowledge-based authentication are more and more urgently required. The use of technologies such as device, voice and biometric facial recognition software can reduce fraudsters’ opportunities.”

Sinerix says that its authentication software could assist legal professionals in tackling fraudulent activity, such as mortgage fraud, and slow down the burgeoning market in fake IDs, by deterring criminals from attempting to carry out unlawful identification checks due to its inbuilt anti-spoofing biometric technology.

About Sinerix iD-Capture and FaceMatch

The Sinerix iD-Capture and FaceMatch applications carry out a process of identifying an individual from data and images extracted from government-issued photographic ID documents.

iD-Capture uses OCR (Optical Character Reader) technology to extract the credentials and machine-readable zone (MRZ) data contained within the identity document which is then digitally compared against ID document templates held in Sinerix’s database and is subjected to an algorithmic check for authenticity purposes. During the OCR process, the photographic image is interrogated where biometric facial features are digitally extracted and temporarily stored.

FaceMatch can now access the photographic data for use in the facial recognition comparison process. The ID document holder is prompted to use their smartphone or tablet device for ‘live’ photo capture techniques to be deployed, extracting the biometric data. The process also uses special anti-spoofing technology so to verify that the ID holder is a real person. Both the ID document biometric data is compared and analysed against the ‘live’ biometric data to provide a ‘yes/no’ match.

SmartData Report

A certificate is returned to the sender confirming the results of the data and provides an optional pdf copy of both the scanned ID document and third-party image.

Security and GDPR compliance

Sinerix uses a combination of HTTPS, SSL, and TLS protocol to provide authentication and encryption to ensure complete protection of sensitive data which is secured within the Microsoft Azure platform.

Sinerix obtains the permission from both the client and third-party users before undertaking ‘live’ data checks against an individual’s credentials from their ID document and/or biometric face scan. The data is extracted and used only for the few seconds to carry out and perform instant checks.